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Friday, 18 May 2012

We are very pleased to announce that the winner of this year's Student Award, Reflect:on Learning Experiences in Art, Design & Media, is Lydia Hardwick from the Royal College of Art. She wins the first prize of £300. Congratulations Lydia!

The runner up is Bradley Bailey from Bath Spa University and he will receive the runner up prize of £100, well done Bradley!We would like to thank all the students who took part in the competition this year; the work is of a very high standard. Submissions were not formally assessed; the winner and runner up were selected via an online voting system and we are very pleased that 843 voters took part to register their preferences.

The award, now in its seventh year, provides a unique opportunity for students to showcase their work alongside a range of UK institutions to a global audience. Students were asked to focus on their experiences of learning in art, design and media and submit an image or piece of multimedia (visual / audio / film / etc) accompanied by a short statement that reflects the epiphanies, inspirations, enablers and opportunities that are part of the experience of higher education.Lydia and Bradley's entries and statements are reproduced below. You can see all the entries in the online gallery.

The Epiphany Head

The Royal College of Art sets your brain on positive overload. I sometimes feel my head will swell and burst. You are constantly fuelled by information and innovation provided through lectures, visiting speakers, critiques, conversation with your peers, exhibitions, technical workshops…

My piece is a visual summarisation of my reaction to this information-dense environment. The material qualities are loose and roughly produced, demonstrating the fast flux of information, settling into little colourful simultaneous epiphanies around my head. I purposeful chose the figure to be straight and wearing grey, to show how my body can sometimes feel flat and static in comparison to the activity running though my head.

Lydia HardwickCeramicsRoyal College of Art

Work placement Video

This is a hand-drawn Animation I created about the work placement I did in March 2010. It’s all about the experience of my first day on the job. I worked for a week with a freelance Health Journalist. I wanted to learn how she successfully set up her business and works freelance.

This was a valuable work experience for me, I gained business knowledge and advice for ways in which I can setup and start my own career as a freelance animator. She’s also a contact I’ll always have and will hopefully be able to work with again in the near future. Work experience has been a big part of my learning in higher education.

Bernadette Blair examines the design studio critique and the
learning value of formative feedback. The focus of her doctorate thesis was
the formative verbal feedback design students receive in studio crits and
the learning achieved through these experiences. The full findings of this
study are published in Dr Blair’s EdD thesis but this article is a précis some
of the findings.

Curriculum reform involves changes in educational system,
program structures and objectives, leading to changes in approaches to teaching
and students’ learning outcomes. These changes often focus on areas such as
higher order thinking skills, standards and employability skills which have
been lobbied by employer demands to introduce skills development strategy in
higher education. Often these changes need corresponding changes in assessment
as assessment drives learning. Hong Kong is currently going through such
changes and in this seminar/workshop, some of these changes will be introduced
and also how assessment is transforming in Hong Kong higher education.

18 June 2012The Disparities in Student Attainment (DiSA) programme has produced a wealth of
findings about how disparities in student attainment can arise; the most
evident of these revolving around the quality of relationships that students
have with their lecturers. This Conference presents this finding in depth,
exploring all aspects of student and lecturer relationships, the impact this
has on attainment and thus the attainment gap. The day will also provide
the opportunity to explore theoretical issues relating to the framing of the
issue and post-race approaches.

Thursday, 17 May 2012

We had a great time yesterday at Drawing on All Resources: developing open educational practice in art, design and media

at Grand Parade, University of Brighton. The verbal feedback during the day was very positive and we hope that everyone who came along found it useful and enjoyable. We shall be putting the presentations, films of the presentations and reports from the event online in Networks 18. In the meantime, have a look at some of the comments made on Twitter #droar.If you were there and took any photographs we would love to see them.Thanks to all the presenters on the day: Tina Barnes Powell, John Casey, Polly Christie, Jane Devine Mejia, Alex Di Savoia,
Chris Follows, Paul Gerhardt, Paul Grivell, Clare
Harris, Stuart Laing, David Mathew, Malcolm McInnes, Paul Postle, Adam Procter, Christoph Raatz, Tony Reeves, Lucy Renton, Tim Seal, CJ Taylor and Helen Waddington; the support staff at Brighton, in particular Joe Mansfield and Chris Williams, Debbie King and her team and of course to everyone who attended.

This conference is co-organized by the Department of
Communication, University of Macao and China New Media Communication
Association (CNMCA). CNMCA is the only national academic organization in China
specialized in computer-mediated communication studies. Starting in 2004, its
annual conference was held in various cities in Greater China including
Beijing, Nanjing, Wuhan, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. It has become the top
academic convention in China on new media communication studies.

The Organizing Committee of the conference is now calling
for papers from both Chinese and international scholars, media professionals
and graduate students. The conference offers Best Student Paper Awards to
papers contributed by graduate students of CNMCA members. The winners of the
Best Student Paper Awards will receive travel subsidies to come to Macao for
the conference.

The central theme of the conference: Social Media, Digital Network and
Globalization. Related issues include, but are not limited to:

The conference will be held in parallel
sessions of Chinese and English.
It will establish special forums and a round table discussion in English
and Chinese to encourage a cross-cultural dialogue and debate for scholars at
home and abroad.